Our last border crossing with the car was not a smooth one. Confusion on the Peru side, a taxi driver who wanted to sell us forms that are free and offices with no staff. The Chilean side wasn’t much better, probably because this border is along the drug trafficking route. We were ‘obvious’ suspects and had to empty the car and answer questions. Their suspicion must have been quite strong as we had to wait until a drug sniffing dog had arrived which they kept putting back in the car, despite the poor dog really not being able to find a thing! As our trip came to an end and we remembered how difficult it was to get things done in Santiago we decided to see if we could sell our car in Arica. Arica is Chile’s most northern town and is pleasant and uncomplicated, people are friendly. We went back to the Kiwi owned hostel, our third visit there and felt like coming home. We cleaned up the car, changed the oil and took some photos to start advertising the car. We soon found out that the price we were asking was way too high, due to the tax free zone which is nearby. Cars are a lot cheaper in the north of Chile than in Santiago. So after a few days in Arica we started the 2000 km drive down to Santiago.

Driving was boring. The only thing you see in the north is sand, mining and more sand. There are no bushes or grass, let alone trees. Any piece of vegetation was pointed out and admired. The first day we were lucky to find a small oasis in which we could wild camp out of sight. The second day we drove 620 kms and didn’t come across any town or sheltered place where we could camp, so we decided to gamble on a 60 km roundtrip detour to Taltal where we were really surprised. Normally mining towns are grim and ugly towns, while Taltal really gave good vibes. It was a tidy town with proud people living in this isolated place. We found a nice hotel with very friendly staff and one of the better breakfasts.

Freedom camping in an oasis

One of the few landmarks in the desert, a massive hand sticking out of the sand

Friendly Taltal

Convoy with mining equipment

After three days in the car we reached La Serena, which is also the starting point of the busier middle part of Chile. La Serena once again was a nice town of decent size with even a shopping mall, cinema and Subway restaurant! Still wishing to sell the car before hitting Santiago we already had some interest from the son of the hostel owner. We also visited car yards who pay cash for second hand cars and received some offers. The son of the hostel owner appeared to be a tire kicker and the first car dealer fell through as well. We ended up selling the car to a car dealer who gave us less than we had hoped for, but the ease of the transaction made us decide to sell the car anyway. Cash in hand and not having to pay for extra accommodation in Santiago or having to deal with a private deal and the no doubt complicated phone conversations in Spanish, made us choose the easy way of selling the car.

With the cash in our pocket it was now time to start planning the onward trip from Chile. With our South American leg of the trip slightly shorter than expected, we are spending more time in Europe. First we needed to find a flight to Amsterdam though, preferably with stop over in Madrid. Julia was trying to find something, even using Flight Fox to get help from experts, but nothing great came up. I was cleaning up our paperwork in the meanwhile and found our return ticket Auckland – Santiago, of which we were only planning to use the flight to Chile. We thought that the return flight had already expired and as we were going to Amsterdam, this flight had no value. But when I looked at it I saw the flight back to New Zealand was for in four days! As Julia was struggling to find anything for a reasonable price I said ‘Shall we go to New Zealand this Saturday’. Judging from the big smile on her face she was quite keen on this. When we did the maths it appeared it was going to be 1200 dollars cheaper to return to NZ and then buy a return ticket AK to AMS, so that’s what we did!

Now we were all of a sudden in a bit of a hurry, we were still 500 kilometers north of Santiago with a car load of stuff in our motel room. So we rented a ute for a day to get us to Santiago and left a lot of our stuff in the motel room with a note explaining to the cleaners that they could help themselves to our left over food, camping gear and safe. We loaded up the Nissan Terrano and felt like miners as we drove the powerful diesel to Santiago.

The drive was very smooth and we arrived early afternoon, only to be stopped by police blockades 2 km from the apartment we booked. We didn’t know what was going on first, but soon found out that the biggest student protest in 20 years was going on. It took us a while to get into the downtown area and check in. After having dropped off the rental car we took the metro back to downtown when the driver requested all windows to be closed. We didn’t understand what for… Until we got to our station and many people were rushing through while covering their mouthes and noses. We went in the direction they came from only to find all the exits were closed and then noticed the pepper spray damps in the station. Now we wanted to get out as well! We eventually found an exit and saw a lot of police and some rioters. The street was full of pepper spray and especially older people seemed to be very affected, throwing up on the side of the street. Not feeling too flash ourselves we hurried to our apartment.

That night we went for a nice dinner with Coca, who had helped and advised us during our time in South America. I know her from when she was on a working holiday in New Zealand in 2008. It was great to catch up and to hear she is going down under again.

Our last two days in Santiago were quite relaxing, mainly waiting for our flight and going for some walks and of course I spent a fair bit of time creating my yearly Tour de France teams for various pools. On Saturday we went to the airport early, remembering the massive LAN lines in Auckland and got on the plane back to New Zealand without any hassles. We were both excited about the 10 days we were going to spend there and surprising Julia’s parents, who thought we were going to fly to Madrid on this day!